Wednesday, May 03, 2017

Font Properties Plus

Everything you need to know

To embed a font in a document or slide show so it can be displayed on any other machine, the font must support that action. The standard Windows properties statement does not show all the needed information.

The bottom of this illustration shows the standard information shown when you right-click a font file, and choose properties. The two views at the top are what appear when the Microsoft Font properties extension is installed.

If you right click on a font file in Windows its basic properties are displayed. The Font properties extension adds several new property tabs to this properties dialog box. These include information relating to font origination and copyright, the type sizes to which hinting and smoothing are applied, and the code pages supported by extended character sets.

It also will tell you if the font can be embeddedand/or edited in a document.

Protected

The font may not be embedded, copied, or modified. If you use a protected font in a document and if the document is opened on a computer that does not have the font installed on it, a font substitution occurs. Word substitutes the closest font available on the computer for the missing protected font.

Print/Preview

The font is embedded and temporarily loaded on the target computer. Documents that contain print/preview fonts must be opened read-only, and no edits are stored in the document. Embedding a font of this nature has the least impact on file size increase.

Editable

The font behaves just like the print/preview fonts, except that you may also apply the font to other text in the same document.

Installable

The font is installed on the target computer permanently when you open the document. This allows you to use the new fonts as if you installed the fonts directly into Windows yourself. This type of embedded font has the greatest impact on file size because the entire font or fonts are included with the document.

Versionand Features tabs

The Version tab includes version and date information. The Features tab describes the font in terms of number of glyphs, number of kerning pairs, the possible existence of a euro symbol and the presence of embedded bitmaps within the font.

Linkstab

If a font doesn't include a Web site URL, but does include a 'vendor ID code' a link will be provided to Microsoft's font vendor database.